


with a hooked hand by your fortress side

by scatteredmoonlight



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Neverland (Once Upon a Time)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-07-30 07:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20093800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scatteredmoonlight/pseuds/scatteredmoonlight
Summary: Emma becomes a stowaway on the Jolly Roger because she heard it can leave Neverland, only Captain Hook puts a hitch in her plan.





	with a hooked hand by your fortress side

**Author's Note:**

  * For [avocadomoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/avocadomoon/gifts).

> Title from A Horse Is Not A Home by Miike Snow

They were boarding the ship at dawn, a sole sentry walking the planks to guard it. Emma could take the guard down easily. He was a young boy, around fifteen, still with red splotches of pimples. Though Neverland was barely medieval. For all Emma knew, his face could be marred with disease.

She reached behind to the quiver hanging from her shoulder, finding the container holding needles soaked with a mild sleeping draught that would wear off long enough for her to sneak aboard the Jolly Roger. It was leaving Neverland first thing in the morning, and Emma intended to board it. She fitted the needle into her flute and placed it against her mouth. Closing her left eye, Emma aimed. Then, as fast as she could, she blew out the needle — within seconds, the boy stumbled, then slowed, until finally he collapsed, fast asleep.

She boarded the ship.

*

No one discovered her. 

She slept hidden behind a crate of potatoes, but the abilities she’d developed in Neverland — a white magic, Peter had said, in disgust — protected her through the night with invisibility. But she’d have to move eventually, and she wasn’t skilled enough to continue the invisibility spell while moving.

At dawn, she was startled awake by the cook’s stewards retrieving supplies.

“Wonder if y’can eat magic beans. Bet that’s why he keeps ‘em in his office. Late night snackin’.”

“Eat magic beans? Are you  _ mad _ ? Cap’in Hook’ll kill us if we eat our ticket outta here.”

“Was only askin’.”

“Well, don’t you go ‘round askin’ bloody questions! Unless you wanna die.”

“Don’t be so extreme, bloody hell.”

They grabbed a bushel of potatoes and left.

* * *

She waited until everyone seemed to have fallen asleep and crept out from the storage compartment with the lightest of steps, the kind she used to escape Pan’s camp. A needle prepared inside her flute, Emma wandered through the ship in search of the captain’s office, where the beans were. The cook’s servants had a tendency for even looser lips that the stewards who she overhead earlier, and so now she had a rough blueprint of the entire ship in her mind.

She edged the corner around the captain’s office, spying on the unsuspecting guards who were about to receive the nastiest sleeping pill in her arsenal. She slid back into the wall with her head tilted to touch the dark wood, listening as the bodies dropped. Smirking, she bade for the office, taking care not to step on any fingers or toes.

The office was empty of any commanding officer, but full of luxuries. Her eyes raked over the fine instruments of compasses, quills, wax seals, parchments stacked high with decorative paper weights on top. A bronze candelabra with a raven’s body stood proud at the left hand corner of the captain’s desk.

It all seemed practically modern compared to Neverland. The longing to return to her own world was impossible to quench. She’d miss the tiny boost of excitement her light magic gave her, but she never mastered it, and indoor plumbing, lightbulbs, and microwaves were more important.

She rushed to the desk and searched through it, pulling out drawers and displacing all its containments as she sifted through. Nothing resembled a magic bean. She didn’t even know what it looked like beyond a rainbow — but was it rainbow pinto bean? Lima bean?  _ Garbanzo _ bean? Her stomach pinched and heart palpitated as the sands of time ran out on her.

The doorknob turned, and she froze.

The situation felt all too familiar.

The door turned in and revealed a devastatingly handsome man — with a hook for a hand.  _ Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me _ , she thought at the sight of it.

He raised a dastardly eyebrow.

A smaller man with a red cap peered around him. He nodded with certainty. “She’s stealing. She ought to walk the plank.”

“Yes, Smee,” said the captain. “She certainly ought to. But if the needles on Mr. O’Conner’s neck is anything to go by, I do believe we found our culprit. And because of her, there’s a lot of missing work unaccounted for.”

Smee smiled. “Labor, sir?”

The captain’s blue eyes bored into her. “Lest she refuse.”

And walked the plank?  _ That _ Emma refused.

But she couldn’t help the horror at being trapped once again completing forced labor. It was Neal and Tallahassee all over again. She just hoped the captain kept his promise and didn’t throw her overboard.

* * *

She mopped the entire deck, the pirates taking a shine to hacking deep throated phlegm whenever she cleaned up a particularly grimy section. Emma bit her tongue, but she would have preferred to chew them out for that. She tended to the sails, as well, when the high winds blew and the sail needed to catch them quickly. Emma and some young boys wrestled with ropes and the whisker pole to pull the sail into position.

As she finished the job, Captain Hook — of course, he was, Emma would never get over these people straight out of a cartoon — sauntered up beside her and gestured at the sail with his silver hook. “Quite the capable lass, you are, Swan.”

“Whatever you say,” she went back for her mop and looked up at him as she bent down, “captain.”

He looked down — to her breasts, she noticed.

She made sure to rise up leisurely, and he looked up after a brief pause. Looking into her eyes, he smiled bashfully. Emma didn’t return it quickly enough to save herself from any increased punishment, but ensured her hips swayed as she left him behind.

“Captain! Activity up starboard!”

“What — oh, right.”

Emma bit the inside her cheek. Yes, she could definitely work with that. The bean was hers, one way or another.

“ _ Captain! _ ” Mr. Smee’s horrified scream precipitated the crash into the sea. Emma’s heart thundered in an instant. She dropped her mop and bucket to peer over the bow like everyone else. A cloud of white seafoam bubbled to the surface, and Hook’s hat floated in the jostling waves. Beside it, a glimmering cerulean tail licked the ocean surface. Two arms lunged for air, only a set of hands grabbed Hook and brought him under.

_ Mermaids _ .

Emma didn’t think. She kicked off her boots and jumped onto the ledge of the bow. “She’s crazy!” sounded all around her, but she didn’t care. Hook seemed a nice enough guy, and he was the only reason her throat hadn’t been sliced that morning. Her ride on that magic bean depended on a living Captain Hook.

“Damn, how did this become my life?” she said, then gulped down a deep breath and dove into the sea.

The cold salty water shocked her, and she quickly swam away from the ship to not get pulled in under it. Luckily for doing that, she caught sight of the mermaid tail and Hook trapped in her hands. He looked stricken, his lungs surely burned to exhaustion, but he put up a good fight nevertheless. His punches were slowed by the water, rendering his situation hopeless, but what he didn’t count on was Emma’s magic.

She swam closer to them, and said a quick prayer hoping she didn’t just get both of them killed. She extended her hand out and flicked, sending a plume of white light that caught both Hook and the mermaid off guard. The mermaid blanched, but Hook lost his senses and shouted.

But it didn’t matter. Her light missed the mermaid by a longshot.

Hook was going to drown. She had to act faster.

She kicked out to the mermaid, magic spurring her forward more than her actual swimming, and she kept firing white light. Eventually one managed to hit the mermaid, whose screams shook the currents and had Emmma freezing momentarily. But soon the mermaid swam deep, deep, deep into the ocean until the glimmering of her tail could no longer be seen.

Hook looked over at Emma, grinning, then his eyes slid closed and he started to float.

_ No. _

Emma rushed to him. Once in her arms, she used magic to propel them to the surface.

* * *

The ship’s doctor set Emma’s next duty to tending to Hook as his nurse, something Emma had no experience in, but given her CPR instruction from high school gym class and addiction to bad TV, she coasted through it as well as anyone could in whatever century these people were living in. 

Hook’s temperature rose overnight, and she tended to his fever. He looked younger, softer as he slept, the sweat lining his brow in furrowed lines that humbled him somehow. He wasn’t formidable or cocky like his waking self, and she ought to not have become so enamored with an unconscious man, but it was what he said while unconscious that stirred her.

“Liam… my brother... don’t... don’t leave me...” His brows had drawn together in anguish, and only Emma coming with a fresh, cold cloth to his forehead and rubbing his shoulder helped calm him down. From how he spoke, his family had all died long ago, his brother dying young as well. It ought to not make her feel drawn to him, but she’d never had a family, and here lied a man who lived all alone, just like her.

He talked of Milah and Smee and others in the crew like sworn brethren, not only his shipmates, and kept murmuring, “I’ll take you home... I’ll take you home...” She sat, transfixed, wishing someone had done the same for her. She remembered the decades spent in Pan’s camp and wished she’d met Hook sooner. She could have joined his crew and at least had the knowledge that someone cared enough to free her from Neverland.

It seemed the enthrallment was mutual.

On the day Hook started to become lucid again, he looked straight into her eyes and smiled. “Why, hello there, beautiful.”

Emma startled, having been hunting through his desk for the magic bean, but with guilt as she did so. It hadn’t felt as her entitlement anymore, not when she knew the others needed it as much as her, not being from this world. She crept to the bed and sat gingerly beside him. “Hey. Feeling any better?”

His smirk slithered across his face, but he couldn’t hold it. It waned soon after. “Never better. Have I ever told you thank you, for the mermaid.”

“Not yet.”

“I admire your spirit, going after me like that after all I’d done. You’re a woman of honor and good morals.”

She sat silent, dumbstruck. She went to Neverland almost immediately after spending a chunk of her life in prison. And the foster system didn’t dole out compliments like that either. “You’re feverish,” she said. He had to be. Those were lies.

“I am, but not over that. No, you’re a woman of honor and a bloody good looking one too. Are those your real eyes?”

She snorted. “My real eyes?”

“Yes, your real...” But then he fell asleep.

He looked so handsome – and that was so wrong of her to notice. He made her  _ mop the deck _ , for goodness sake.

She tried not to let the disorientation show, despite no one around to see her. She feigned a smile, unsure of what to make of this.

She didn’t think that she’d ever be interested in a man that way after Neal and giving birth to their son. Love had long died in her, and nothing could alight that flame again. Until, apparently, Captain Hook.

He woke up again close to nightfall, after a fitful sleep.

“Emma?” he said, as she sat by the window, looking out at the sea sweeping past them underwater.

She looked over at him. “You’re awake.”

He sat up and swung his legs out. He was more awake this time; she could tell from the strength of his stance, the sharpening of his gaze, how he seemed to examine her. Not to check her out, but to catch a glimpse of her as a person. Emma didn’t know which made her feel more vulnerable. She had to turn the tide between, so she went to the bed with the intent to give him a massage. His muscles must be aching, and there was nothing like a massage to distract a man.

She sat beside him on the bed and considered herself for a moment, then began kneading his shoulders in a massage. He grumbled instantly, relaxed entirely beneath her fingertips. Despite herself, Emma bit down a smile at the adorable reaction from the fearsome Captain Hook. She sought out troublesome areas and worked them out, feeling smug at every groan that replied back to her.

“Don’t think I don’t — mmph. Yes, that’s good — I don’t know what you’re doing here,” said Hook.

“And what am I doing?”

“Hiding something. People are always so nice when you’re evasive.”

Her hands faltered, and perhaps pressed too firmly when she moved again. “I’m not hiding anything.” Yet she waited for his response, intrigued.

“Yes, you are. Now spit it out.”

He shifted beneath her hands, turning to look at her. His stunning eyes holding with such concern took the breath out of her. No one looked at her that way. Not Neal or Lily or even Ingrid. His eyes managed to soften further, and Emma believed she saw love there. “Emma, please tell me what’s wrong.” She’d never noticed before, but the man had never stood this close to her with those blue eyes with those long lashes gazing endearingly at her. “Emma?” He laid a hand over her cheek.

“I’m sorry.” She leaned into him and didn’t understand why she did it. “I needed that bean. I’m not from Neverland or wherever you come from.” She glanced at him. “I just want to go home.”

He gazed into her eyes, looking back and forth and searching her, perhaps looking for a truth he’d never find. A truth she was too scared to think, even less admit. “I have two magic beans, only two,” he said. “My crew isn’t from this land, and I intend to take them home. You, Emma Swan, are a rare treasure who I intend to honor with my life. This second bean is yours to go home.”

“I don’t deserve it, not after trying to steal it.”

“Nevertheless, I owe you a debt. I intend to repay it. The bean is yours.”

Her heart thudded, that fear surfacing stronger than ever. She licked her lips – his eyes moved to it in razor sharp focus. “Did you mean it earlier when you said all those things?”

“You’ll need to be more specific. I say lots of things.”

“About me. About having honor.”

He quirked his head. “Of course, you dove into the high seas to save me from a mermaid. I saw your white magic, too. No one without the purest of hearts could wield such power or do the things you’ve done.”

She didn’t know what to say to that, so she asked him another question. “And the other stuff about me? Did you mean it?”

“Other stuff? What do – oh.” His eyebrow hitched up in a wide curve. “Oh, yes, Swan. Yes, indeed.”

He gazed at her like he wanted her – and she wanted him too. She knew she did. But she was still so afraid. Of Neal, of her life, of her future. Hook’s potential to hurt scared her like nothing else, perhaps because she wanted him so ardently. He leaned in, and she did as well, but pressed a kiss to his cheek and left it at that. To her surprise, he didn’t push it.

“You have some medicine,” she said, rising and going to the desk. “The doctor told me to give it to you as soon as you woke up.”

“No time like the present,” he said, charming and grinning.  
  



End file.
